But the promise of a big payday, if the company goes public or is acquired, is what enables many startups to attract talent when they are competing with listed companies that can, initially, often pay far higher salaries.Should a startup hit the status of Canva or Atlassian, that is the point that the founders and employees could choose to sell their company shares and receive a 50 per cent discount on their marginal tax rate for the capital gains, or profit, they made on their stake. Doing so can be highly lucrative once companies hit multi-million-dollar valuations."Employee share ownership is actually a pretty powerful mechanism for retention and loyalty and hard work," said Alan Jones, a prominent Australian venture capitalist and general partner of M8 Ventures.He told ABC News that big cash-out events for startup founders and employees "don't happen very often; they may happen once in 10 years in a startup".But asked whether that can be very lucrative for those that do cash out at the right time, he said: "Yeah, it can be There are a number of millionaires at Canva, right?""But we also have to remember that the failure rate in Australian tech startups, startups worldwide, is very high."Mr Jones said he thought changes to the CGT discount would make it harder for startups to attract talent and hurt the local ecosystem."Why would I choose to take $200,000 in employee share options in an Australian startup and get taxed at 50 per cent